The small big-time problem

Ready-to-use WordPress themes are awesome when you are really sure of how you can use the WordPress theme without making a lot of changes...they suck when customisation demands soar higher than we expect. Yet people use them because they are the easiest, quickest and possibly the most affordable way out. You see, that’s why they are awesome!

The grave trough shows up when a client discovers one fine day, that they want an extra grid somewhere or a lesser attribute on a certain section of a certain page. We code, and we recode and we re-re-code. And finally we deliver. And then we get grumpy faces telling us how we took such a long time to make such a minute change.

My own experience

The last time I finished working on a website design and customisation project (and that was around a month ago), I remember having been drained out, thanks to the numerous simple small time edits that ended up gulping down a lot of my time. It gets frustrating, irritating and extremely monotonous when you find out that you have to rework on the same piece of code just because the client’s requirement shifted a tiny tad.

This frustration no more, has to continue!

PageLines has always been making it super-awesome with little plug-ins here and there, all simple and all hugely marvelous. This time, it is Platform 5, something that the folks at PageLines describe as a complete drag and drop editing system that fits itself equally well in all WordPress themes.

Oh yes! We believed in every word of the description when we went through the features. In this PageLines Platform 5 review, we're going to show you why we believe that this new WordPress pagebuilder is great.

Pagelines Platform 5 Review: A summary

The issue which pinches most

The problem occurs when everything is said and done, and a last moment change erupts from nowhere. Every small change might look small, but somehow it ropes in a lot of your time, effort and energy.

How Platform 5 is ushering the change

Platform 5 comes loaded with a lot of features, some of which, we are listing as below:

The drag and drop functionality! Who does not appreciate the little leverage of setting a whole page in a few clicks?

And then there is this provision to install an extension in one click.

Some superior customising ease that comes with it..

It’s extension based.

And how will it make your life easier?

Setting it up takes 5 minutes and then you are good to go. The editor is damn simple to use, every feature imbibed in it has a very clear depiction….the plugin is virtually bug-less and you are bound to find it to be a frictionless ride. You can set up a page in literally minutes and before you know, it is all set to dazzle your clients.

It helps your business, even if you are following a lean model

Don’t want to invest right away? No worries! It’s basically free, you have to pay for each extension that you install. Free extensions are available for those who have just taken to the art of website building. For the pros, there is a complete set of wonderful extensions to choose from. Buy as much as you need or as few as you need, Platform 5 gives you complete liberty to do your design and development task.

You get the luxury of custom templates in the convenience of ready-made ones

And this, we guess, is the best. When you choose to work on a particular template, there might be elements which would just add an aura of excellence to it. That aura mostly, goes unworked for because it is a headache for both the client and the developer to sit and tweak the codes of a ready-made template.

Platform 5 does away with this headache.

It’s just about selecting an element that you would want to add to the page, and then drag it down to where you want it to be. Editing each element is practically effortless and you just need a couple of hours to get used to the entire system.

You can do literally anything you want on a page just by using a simple ‘page editor’. And that includes stuff like adding a grid, a carousel or an attribute, removing any of them, making changes in widths, boundaries, padding, sizing, alignment, size of text, blah blah blah...phew!! It’s totally incredible!

Here are a few features that we simply loved:

It is developer friendly, no coding, no reworks, just grab, drag and drop.

It works seamlessly with any theme that’s built in Wordpress. I shall simplify it for you, it makes editing in Wordpress websites, kind of standardized and systematic.

It is 100% Javascript driven.

It enables altering and adding content in any section of any page, in any form just in a few clicks. Non-technical techies can utilize it like a pro and get stuff done in absolutely no time.

You can add extensions real time. I would say that’s a blessing because most frameworks sort of have bundles elements and features that can be used in a particular theme. With this plugin, that is simply removed because, say you are working on a theme and realize that a slider would fit better in place of a fixed banner, while the theme offers for the later, you can easily modify it. In a scenario otherwise, ouch! Jitters!

We could go on and on, but somehow, we feel you would get a better grasp if you install Platform 5 on your Wordpress and actually get started working with it.

Is there scope for improvement?

And we already made a mention of it, didn’t we?

First, the editor disappears if, by any chance, you click somewhere on the page that you are working on. There should be an indicator button somewhere to help the user easily spot out where he should click to reopen the editor.

Next, you did something fishy, you can’t undo it. You would have to go back to the editor and edit it back even to get back to your last step.

But these are nothing compared to the benefits you get, so we just let it go.

Alright, so how do you use it?

Basically, you have an admin and then you have a front end. Your admin rights allow you to access the front end and the front end allows you to make limitless changes with simple clicks and drags. You can add pages, edit pages, add sections, edit them, add and remove elements, add columns and grids and boast of being the quickest WordPress pro just by using a single dropdown on the plugin’s front-end.

Once you install the plugin and get done with the sign-up formalities, you can start using it as shown in the screenshot above. Interests you further? Find out more on how to use PageLine’s Platform 5 Video.

Platform 5, it seems is the quickest and most developer friendly plug-in that WordPress has seen to date. For more features of the plug-in, visit Pagelines.

Have we used it?

Oh yes, we have, my friend! And we just fell in love with it. What we loved the most out of all the things? The extension thing! According to what our clients need, how creative they want their stuff to be or how informative, in how much time and in what budget, we can decide on exactly what extensions we would want to use. People at PageLines promise to update the list of extensions with cool new ones, once or twice each week. So there is going to be a lot to choose from and consecutively, a lot of scope for beautifying whatever we do.

And, that’s it!

Platform 5 has been officially launched on the 2nd of March, 2016 and it has been installed considerable times! You can do that too, provided you are using anything between WP 3.8 and WP 4.5. We are very sure you will thank PageLines for this revolutionary little plugin.

See what people are saying about it

We'd be happy to add more details should you require them to our PageLines Platform 5 Review - in the meantime, enjoy using it and creating awesome WordPress pages!

One more thing... Did you know that people who share useful stuff like this post look AWESOME too? ;-) Please leave a useful comment with your thoughts, then share this on your Facebook group(s) who would find this useful and let's reap the benefits together. Thank you for sharing and being nice!

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